Daniel Cormier will defend the UFC light heavyweight title against Anthony Johnson at UFC 206 in Toronto.Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Losing light heavyweight title fight leaves limited options for return to Air Canada Centre in two weeks. E. Spencer Kyte looks at immediate fixes and long-term solutions in the wake of the latest main event injury in the UFC.

Two weeks before the UFC returns to Toronto for the first time in three years, the event has lost half its main event.

Light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled rematch with Anthony Johnson. Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com was first to report the news.

This is a massive blow to a fight card that was initially panned, but got stronger with the addition of two fights involving fighters bounced from the UFC 205 pay-per-view at the 11th hour.

Surging welterweight Donald Cerrone was booked into a “sure to be fun” fight with Matt Brown after being a late scratch from the show at Madison Square Garden when his opponent, Kelvin Gastelum, couldn’t make the 170-pound limit. Unable to get medical clearance in the state, Rashad Evans’ middleweight debut opposite Tim Kennedy was shifted to the Dec. 10 show at the Air Canada Centre, giving the main card a quartet of compelling bouts featuring established names.

Earlier this week, however, Evans was denied a license in Ontario, once again scuttling his bout with Kennedy, who was hoping to stay on the card. While the event could absorb the loss of the middleweight match-up, having the headlining act fall out at this stage might be too tough a blow for the event to remain successful.

Complicating matters even further is the fact that the light heavyweight division is exceptionally thin and the replacement options for Cormier are sparse.

Ryan Bader fought last week and is currently a free agent, having completed his contract with his third-round stoppage win over Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. Additionally, he fought Johnson in January, losing in 96 seconds.

Perennial contender Alexander Gustafsson also fell to Johnson in rapid fashion in the past, plus he’s sidelined with a back injury, having been scheduled to face Nogueira last weekend before being replaced by Bader. Glover Teixeira is out as well, having been the latest victim of Johnson’s prodigious power, losing to “Rumble” in 13 seconds at the end of August.

Emerging light heavyweights Nikita Krylov and Misha Cirkunov are already scheduled to meet in Toronto, so you know they’re going to be in shape and ready to fight. Tapping one of those two to replace Cormier might be the best option, though a bout with Johnson would be a significant step up in competition for either guy and there are no guarantees that “Rumble” would agree to either pairing.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the new UFC ownership opts to handle this situation.

The possibility is there to shift the featherweight scrap between Max Holloway and Anthony Pettis to the main event, tacking another two rounds onto that fight (which really should be a five-round fight anyway), but both would have to agree. Holloway has already taken to Twitter to make his feelings known:

Pettis, however, might not be so inclined, having struggled to make the 145-pound limit for his divisional debut in August. Facing Holloway is a tall order to begin with. Tacking on two more potential rounds this close to fight night might not be something the former lightweight champion is comfortable doing.

There is also the potential of switching this from a pay-per-view to a Fight Night event, as the UFC did back in February when Cain Velasquez was forced out of his championship rematch with Fabricio Werdum on a similar timetable.

Werdum eventually bowed out as well, resulting in Stephen Thompson and Johny Hendricks getting moved to the main event and UFC 196 becoming UFC Fight Night 82. Doing the same is a possibility here, though the organization has already started a heavy promotional push for UFC 207 geared around the return of Ronda Rousey. If they did go this route, don’t expect the numbering for the Dec. 30 event to change.

UFC 206 would just go the way of UFC 151 and UFC 176, disappearing into the ether while being survived by a sad Wikipedia entry.

There are bound to be a few “if UFC 205 wasn’t so stacked” reactions to today’s news and that’s fair – that show was beyond loaded and could have spared another fight or two to help bolster other events without taking a real hit.

But it didn’t happen and I understand why the UFC wanted to go as big as possible for its long awaited debut in New York City, just like how I understand the Dec. 30 card being a significantly more robust collection of fights than next month’s return to Toronto.

While it’s fun to play the “shoulda woulda coulda” game in situations like this, the more interesting discussion point is trying to find away to avoid this in the future.

The obvious answer is to spread things out more evenly going forward – having all B+ or A- pay-per-view lineups instead of three A+ offerings, a solid A or two, mostly Bs and one or two C+ efforts.

On paper, it’s possible to have two championship fights on every pay-per-view card (with a couple left over for FOX) if every champion fights twice per year, but that’s an ideal world. Things never work out as planned.

My idea: six pay-per-views a year and stack ’em all.

Instead of having a couple really big shows, have six events with two or three championship fights on each, plus an assortment of title eliminators and just plain fun scraps. Do UFC 205 six times a year.

Not only would there be significantly more anticipation for each pay-per-view because you would be forced to wait anywhere between three and seven weeks between shows, but the all-star lineup makes dealing with late injuries much easier, as this month’s event at MSG showed.

On top of that, rolling out six monster events would probably generate as many – if not more – pay-per-view buys than doing one or two with a handful of good, not great events interspersed throughout the rest of the year.

Six events generating 1.25 million buys each would produce 7.5 million buys total for the year; the UFC did 7.775 million buys combined in 2015 across 13 events and that was before Conor McGregor went supernova as a pay-per-view draw. If he’s headlining two or three of those six shows, the amount of water the remaining events have to carry is decreased because “The Notorious” one does big business every time he steps into the Octagon.

Injuries suck, but they can’t be avoided and unfortunately, Canadian events seem to be most frequently hit in these situations.

Losing Cormier stinks. The back-up options aren’t great. UFC 206 (or whatever it becomes) is going to be less than the fans in Toronto anticipated and there is nothing that can be done to change that now.

But the UFC can look at potential safeguards to prevent this type of situation occurring and submarining another show in the future. Reducing the frequency, but increasing the strength of each event, might be the answer.

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